[[transaction-declarative-rolling-back]]
= Rolling Back a Declarative Transaction

The previous section outlined the basics of how to specify transactional settings for
classes, typically service layer classes, declaratively in your application. This section
describes how you can control the rollback of transactions in a simple, declarative
fashion in XML configuration. For details on controlling rollback semantics declaratively
with the `@Transactional` annotation, see
xref:data-access/transaction/declarative/annotations.adoc#transaction-declarative-attransactional-settings[`@Transactional` Settings].

The recommended way to indicate to the Spring Framework's transaction infrastructure
that a transaction's work is to be rolled back is to throw an `Exception` from code that
is currently executing in the context of a transaction. The Spring Framework's
transaction infrastructure code catches any unhandled `Exception` as it bubbles up
the call stack and makes a determination whether to mark the transaction for rollback.

In its default configuration, the Spring Framework's transaction infrastructure code
marks a transaction for rollback only in the case of runtime, unchecked exceptions.
That is, when the thrown exception is an instance or subclass of `RuntimeException`.
(`Error` instances also, by default, result in a rollback).

As of Spring Framework 5.2, the default configuration also provides support for
Vavr's `Try` method to trigger transaction rollbacks when it returns a 'Failure'.
This allows you to handle functional-style errors using Try and have the transaction
automatically rolled back in case of a failure. For more information on Vavr's Try,
refer to the https://docs.vavr.io/#_try[official Vavr documentation].
Here's an example of how to use Vavr's Try with a transactional method:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="primary"]
----
	@Transactional
	public Try<String> myTransactionalMethod() {
		// If myDataAccessOperation throws an exception, it will be caught by the
		// Try instance created with Try.of() and wrapped inside the Failure class
		// which can be checked using the isFailure() method on the Try instance.
		return Try.of(delegate::myDataAccessOperation);
	}
----
======

As of Spring Framework 6.1, there is also special treatment of `CompletableFuture`
(and general `Future`) return values, triggering a rollback for such a handle if it
was exceptionally completed at the time of being returned from the original method.
This is intended for `@Async` methods where the actual method implementation may
need to comply with a `CompletableFuture` signature (auto-adapted to an actual
asynchronous handle for a call to the proxy by `@Async` processing at runtime),
preferring exposure in the returned handle rather than rethrowing an exception:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="primary"]
----
	@Transactional @Async
	public CompletableFuture<String> myTransactionalMethod() {
		try {
			return CompletableFuture.completedFuture(delegate.myDataAccessOperation());
		}
		catch (DataAccessException ex) {
			return CompletableFuture.failedFuture(ex);
		}
	}
----
======

Checked exceptions that are thrown from a transactional method do not result in a rollback
in the default configuration. You can configure exactly which `Exception` types mark a
transaction for rollback, including checked exceptions by specifying _rollback rules_.

.Rollback rules
[[transaction-declarative-rollback-rules]]
[NOTE]
====
Rollback rules determine if a transaction should be rolled back when a given exception is
thrown, and the rules are based on exception types or exception patterns.

Rollback rules may be configured in XML via the `rollback-for` and `no-rollback-for`
attributes, which allow rules to be defined as patterns. When using
xref:data-access/transaction/declarative/annotations.adoc#transaction-declarative-attransactional-settings[`@Transactional`], rollback rules may
be configured via the `rollbackFor`/`noRollbackFor` and
`rollbackForClassName`/`noRollbackForClassName` attributes, which allow rules to be
defined based on exception types or patterns, respectively.

When a rollback rule is defined with an exception type, that type will be used to match
against the type of a thrown exception and its super types, providing type safety and
avoiding any unintentional matches that may occur when using a pattern. For example, a
value of `jakarta.servlet.ServletException.class` will only match thrown exceptions of
type `jakarta.servlet.ServletException` and its subclasses.

When a rollback rule is defined with an exception pattern, the pattern can be a fully
qualified class name or a substring of a fully qualified class name for an exception type
(which must be a subclass of `Throwable`), with no wildcard support at present. For
example, a value of `"jakarta.servlet.ServletException"` or `"ServletException"` will
match `jakarta.servlet.ServletException` and its subclasses.

[WARNING]
=====
You must carefully consider how specific a pattern is and whether to include package
information (which isn't mandatory). For example, `"Exception"` will match nearly
anything and will probably hide other rules. `"java.lang.Exception"` would be correct if
`"Exception"` were meant to define a rule for all checked exceptions. With more unique
exception names such as `"BaseBusinessException"` there is likely no need to use the
fully qualified class name for the exception pattern.

Furthermore, pattern-based rollback rules may result in unintentional matches for
similarly named exceptions and nested classes. This is due to the fact that a thrown
exception is considered to be a match for a given pattern-based rollback rule if the name
of the thrown exception contains the exception pattern configured for the rollback rule.
For example, given a rule configured to match on `"com.example.CustomException"`, that
rule will match against an exception named `com.example.CustomExceptionV2` (an exception
in the same package as `CustomException` but with an additional suffix) or an exception
named `com.example.CustomException$AnotherException` (an exception declared as a nested
class in `CustomException`).
=====
====

The following XML snippet demonstrates how to configure rollback for a checked,
application-specific `Exception` type by supplying an _exception pattern_ via the
`rollback-for` attribute:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes"]
----
	<tx:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="txManager">
		<tx:attributes>
			<tx:method name="get*" read-only="true" rollback-for="NoProductInStockException"/>
			<tx:method name="*"/>
		</tx:attributes>
	</tx:advice>
----

If you do not want a transaction rolled back when an exception is thrown, you can also
specify 'no rollback' rules. The following example tells the Spring Framework's
transaction infrastructure to commit the attendant transaction even in the face of an
unhandled `InstrumentNotFoundException`:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes"]
----
	<tx:advice id="txAdvice">
		<tx:attributes>
			<tx:method name="updateStock" no-rollback-for="InstrumentNotFoundException"/>
			<tx:method name="*"/>
		</tx:attributes>
	</tx:advice>
----

When the Spring Framework's transaction infrastructure catches an exception and consults
the configured rollback rules to determine whether to mark the transaction for rollback,
the strongest matching rule wins. So, in the case of the following configuration, any
exception other than an `InstrumentNotFoundException` results in a rollback of the
attendant transaction:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes"]
----
	<tx:advice id="txAdvice">
		<tx:attributes>
			<tx:method name="*" rollback-for="Throwable" no-rollback-for="InstrumentNotFoundException"/>
		</tx:attributes>
	</tx:advice>
----

You can also indicate a required rollback programmatically. Although simple, this process
is quite invasive and tightly couples your code to the Spring Framework's transaction
infrastructure. The following example shows how to programmatically indicate a required
rollback:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="primary"]
----
	public void resolvePosition() {
		try {
			// some business logic...
		} catch (NoProductInStockException ex) {
			// trigger rollback programmatically
			TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus().setRollbackOnly();
		}
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="secondary"]
----
	fun resolvePosition() {
		try {
			// some business logic...
		} catch (ex: NoProductInStockException) {
			// trigger rollback programmatically
			TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus().setRollbackOnly();
		}
	}
----
======

You are strongly encouraged to use the declarative approach to rollback, if at all
possible. Programmatic rollback is available should you absolutely need it, but its
usage flies in the face of achieving a clean POJO-based architecture.


